Rhode Island’s child welfare department collaborated with the Government Performance Lab to overhaul service delivery for child-welfare involved children and families.
Faced with troubling safety and permanency outcomes for children and families and siloed programmatic oversight mechanisms, Rhode Island’s child welfare agency collaborated with the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) to transform how services were delivered to child welfare-involved children and families.
With help from GPL, the department restructured, reprocured, and began to more actively manage the agency’s $90 million array of services for families. Through this work, DCYF has dramatically expanded its portfolio of family-based services, implemented real-time performance management strategies agency-wide, and has seen meaningful improvements in outcomes for children and families.
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